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Cajeta Making – 101. Goat Milk Caramel Made Easy.

If you want the best dessert topping in the world…. you HAVE to make cajeta. Dessert topping, flavoring for your coffee, a spoonful for your mouth…whatever you decide to do with it, it’s worth the time. Cajeta is basically a dulce de leche or caramel made from goat’s milk and sugar. The milk is heated until the sauce thickens, browns, and gets super tasty for your mouth. I have made plenty of cajeta, but since I got back from Mexico in February, I have been making it in a copper pot, also known as a cazo de cobre. It is a traditional way to make cajeta, and really helps to speed the process because of the excellent conduction and distribution of heat. If you don’t have a copper pot, you can use a heavy pot as long as it’s not cast iron.

On to the recipe… First thing’s first… you need some goat milk. Lucky me, I live on a goat dairy. For my recipe, I used a gallon of milk. It condensed down to about two and a half pints. Here’s all the ingredients you will need:

1 Gallon goat milk

4 Cups of sugar

1 Tablespoon of vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda disolved in a tiny bit of tepid water

Pour your milk into your pot and add the sugar and vanilla. Turn the heat on medium and stir it all up.

Heat the milk to a nice simmer… stir frequently. Add the baking soda and water mixture. You may want to take the pot off the heat because it will bubble up when you put in the baking soda. I just add it very slowly and it doesn’t foam up too much.

Keep simmering… and stirring…

Slowly, the milk will start to evaporate and the sauce will begin to thicken.

Keep stirring often.

When it is as thick and dark as you like it, remove it from the heat. I have found that I like mine very thick and very brown. If you want your sauce to be thinner… stop sooner. Thicker? Stop later. Just don’t let it burn… and keep stirring.

It’s all a matter of your taste.

When it’s done, pour it into a heat safe pitcher (or straight into heated jars). Then pour into some canning jars and store in your fridge. I like to take a part of each batch and mix it with some nice bourbon.

This photo is from a previous batch that was thinner and lighter. Half of the batch we mixed with some Eagle Rare, a very tasty bourbon. (We didn’t use the whole bottle in the cajeta… really) Enjoy!

Stovetop temp varies from oven to oven, but you want a fast simmer, not a rolling boil. This batch was 1 gallon of milk and it took 2 hours. Smaller batches can go faster. Stir frequently at first, then more and more frequently as it thickens so that you don’t burn any on the bottom of your pot.